1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to XML documents and, more specifically, to storing multipart XML documents.
2. Description of the Related Art
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a popular markup language capable of describing many different types of data, by which software applications can communicate with one another and with human users. XML is a human readable markup language. XML instructions can be read and understood by a human, in contrast to, for example, computer languages that store and send information as binary data.
Because XML is a human readable, platform independent standard, data formulated in XML may be read and interpreted by any computer utilizing any platform, and is easily manipulated and tested by software developers. The ease of use of XML across many different hardware and software environments makes it a popular choice for communication between modern computer software, especially web services based applications. The growing popularity of web services based applications and XML has created a growing demand for new and useful methods to make the programming of web based applications quicker, easier and more efficient. The Apache Cocoon Project (cocoon) is one example of such a system. Cocoon is a web development framework built around the concept of separation of concerns and component-based web development. Cocoon seeks to provide a framework by which a set of components may be programmed where each component provides an isolated function. These components may then be used as building blocks for the development of more complex components and/or complete web services based applications. Using the cocoon framework, users may be able to hook together a series of pre-developed components to form a web based application without needing to engage in the minute details of computer programming. Cocoon also allows users to extract added benefit from programmed components by reusing them in a wide range of web applications without reprogramming what has previously been programmed.
XML document tools have been developed for the storing and searching of data. For example, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) provides for the accessing of on-line directory services. As part of the cocoon framework, a method is provided for the storing and searching of XML document data. Cocoon provides for a database implementation that allows for the manual indexing of particular elements of an XML document, allowing for the XML document to be located during a search. However, cocoon's ability to search for particular subdocuments of an XML document is very limited.
Other methods for searching through XML documents exist. For example, XML documents may be searched through linearly, one after another. However, such a non-indexed search can take a long time, especially in light of the long length of XML documents attributable to their human readable nature.